22/2021 Soft Monetary Constraint and Shortage
in the European Sovereign Debt Economy.
Insights from J. Kornai’s theory - Updated version
From the fourth quarter of 2007 to the second quarter of 2020, the monetary base
in the euro area grew by 330%, the money supply by 61% and inflation measured by the
consumer price index - only 17%. Interest rates are around zero and negative, inflation is low,
and we often register deflation. This discrepancy between the growth of money and prices
has not only practical dimensions for the ECB and FED monetary policy, but also a theoretical
significance. In this contribution, we propose an interpretation of these trends on the basis of
concepts developed by J. Kornai in his economics of shortage analysis, which we apply to the
sovereign debt market of European countries. The point here is not to transpose Kornai's
shortage economy analysis to European capitalist economies, but to show that similar
phenomena are appearing today in a different institutional context.
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23/2021 Balkan Monetary Dependence
during the XIX and XX centuries
In this article, we look at the main stages of the monetary systems on the Balkans, representing a cyclical alternation of dependent models, each of them effectively serving the relationship of the Balkan peripheral economies with their dominant military, geopolitical and economic centre. This centre of attraction is the anchor against which the monetary regime of the periphery is adjusted. We consider four periods: (i) the building of a national monetary system after long years of Ottoman domination, and especially the accession to the Latin Monetary Union, (ii) the adoption of the rules of the League of Nations and monetary stabilizations based on the gold exchange standard, (iii) the inclusion in the German Lebensraum and the system of currency control and clearings, and finally (iv) the Soviet zone and the COMECON, the mechanism of passive money and the transferable ruble. In the last period we present the Yugoslav monetary regime, which was attached to the West.
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